Posted: 09/24/2004

The Last Shot

(2004)

by Hank Yuloff

When you see The Last Shot, you realize the poignancy of the title in that it is really the first shot of a movie the FBI financed in order to nab mobster racketeers involved with union bosses.

Matthew Broderick (Wargames, Stepford Wives) stars as Steven Schats, a director-wannabe who has THE script that will propel him to fame and fortune. He is in the entertainment business now, but at a lower capacity - he manages a movie theater. He has the requisite wannabe actress girlfriend (played by Calista Flockhart from Ally McNaked… Uh… McBeal and The Birdcage) and wannabe crew members as friends.

Enter Joe Devine, Federal Bureau of Investigation. He is a field agent who also wants to make the big time, but the agency has had him toiling away in Houston and is now sending him to Providence, Rhode Island. I guess that is the Hollywood equivalent of public access cable. Devine (played by Alec Baldwin - the Baldwin that can act) has stumbled onto a way to get John Gotti in jail by involving the Teamsters in a racketeering and bribe crime. He has to make a movie to do it. And all he needs is a script and a million dollars. That probably sounds familiar to a lot of wannabe producers reading this (Del, Jon, Andy…).

Devine sees Schats as a desperate enough director to have his film, entitled “Arizona,” photographed in Providence (the Arizona of the East, as we are continuously told).

The Last Shot is consistently funny as a take off on Hollywood and the exposure of everyone’s dreams of being in “The Business.” Depending on the individual watching the film and the type of joke on the screen, you could tell if someone in the audience was a wannabe actress, director, grip, or cinematographer. There were no movie reviewers portrayed in the movie, so I got to laugh at all of them. I also got to see one of my advertising client’s logos ripped off (Mike Diamond Plumbing, I hope they got your release, or you are in for some money!) so that made it an even more fun adventure in the theater.

As with any good comedy, not all the humor was in the trailer, and especially funny was what happens when the FBI brass takes the place of The Studio brass making the picture. Some times you can see the effects of notes on a film and wonder “What were they thinking?” In The Last Shot, you see how that happens.
Broderick and Baldwin (State and Main, The Cooler, Married to the Mob) make a great director-producer team. They are as believable as they need to be as Schats sees his dream come true and Devine buys into his own unrealized desires to be in Entertainment instead of crime detection. Maybe those skills will help him later on when he tries to figure out how a movie never maid money though it did $200 million at the domestic box-office.

There have been lots of movies that take off on the Hollywood Process. In recent years I can think of three, State and Main, The Player, and Swimming with Sharks, that I liked more than The Last Shot. But I did enjoy this film. I laughed consistently and enjoyed the acting. So if you want to take a shot at the cineplex, go see The Last Shot.

Hank Yuloff is more frustrated than any of us at FilmMonthly.com ‘cause he has the talent but not the brain to use it… unlike us, who do public access for the A.D.D. impaired.

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